The basic compases of flamenco explained at a glance

How to use this guide

This article doesn’t explain what compás is or how to learn to feel it: that’s what What is compás flamenco is for, which develops the concept at length with practical exercises. This page is different: it’s a quick-lookup sheet, meant to be revisited whenever you need to recall exactly which beats a given palo accents, without having to reread an entire article.

The accent data summarized here follows the description most widely shared among guitar, cante and dance schools. It’s still worth remembering that compás flamenco lives in oral tradition and allows for regional and school-specific variants: two masters can explain the same palo with different nuances without either one being “wrong.”

Quick reference table

Palo	Type of compás	Main accents	Character
Tangos	Binary, 4 beats	Weak beats (2 and 4)	Direct, very marked, danceable
Tientos	Binary, 4 beats (like tango, much slower)	Weak beats (2 and 4)	Solemn, unhurried, a “slow tango”
Tanguillo (de Cádiz)	4 beats with the first left silent	2 and 4	Bouncy, cheerful, tied to Cádiz Carnival
Fandangos	Ternary, 3 beats	First beat of the compás	The cante often starts free, before the guitar settles into compás
Soleá	Amalgam, 12 beats	3, 6, 8, 10, 12	Grave, unhurried, the “mother” of much cante jondo
Alegrías	Amalgam, 12 beats	3, 6, 8, 10, 12	Lively and festive, with an instrumental “silencio” midway through the letra
Bulerías	Amalgam, 12 beats	3, 6, 8, 10, 12, with constant shifts and syncopation	The fastest and freest of all, with a very marked remate on beat 12
Seguiriya	12 beats grouped irregularly (traditionally 5+4+3)	Shifted relative to soleá, a cycle many teachers count as starting on beat 8	The most “broken” and unstable compás in flamenco
Guajira	Amalgam, 12 beats (related to soleá)	Looser distribution than soleá, a less “closed” feel	An ida y vuelta cante, with Cuban musical influence

The binary compases: tangos, tientos, tanguillo

Tangos. A binary 4-beat compás, the easiest in the flamenco repertoire to pick out by ear. The accent traditionally falls on the weak beats (2 and 4), a pattern shared with much of Andalusian and Afro-Latin popular music. Its regularity makes it the usual starting point for anyone learning compás.
Tientos. Shares the same binary 4-beat base and accent pattern as tango, to the point that it’s often described as “a very slow, solemn tango.” That slowness completely changes the character: where tango is direct and festive, tiento is more inward and profound, and it’s common for a single performance to move from tientos into tangos by gradually speeding up the same pulse.
Tanguillo de Cádiz. A 4-beat compás with a very particular trait: the first beat is left silent, and only the second, third and fourth are marked, giving it that “bouncy” feel so characteristic of Cádiz Carnival. Rhythmically it results from layering a 6/8 meter over a 2/4 meter, a combination (a kind of polyrhythm) rarely found outside flamenco.

The ternary compás: fandangos

Fandangos. Unlike the palos above, the fandango is organized in a ternary 3-beat compás, with the accent falling on the first beat of each cycle, a pattern reminiscent of other widespread three-beat dances in Spanish popular music. One important particularity: in sung fandango (the “free” fandango, or the fandango de Huelva, for example) the cantaor often starts each tercio without sticking to the pulse, and it’s the guitar that picks the compás back up in the interludes — a contrast between freedom and regularity not found the same way in other palos.

The 12-beat amalgam compás: the largest family

Most of the palos considered “cante jondo,” or the most representative of flamenco, share this base of 12 irregular beats, even though each one treats it differently:

Soleá. The reference compás for this whole family, with accents on beats 3, 6, 8, 10 and 12. It’s performed at an unhurried tempo with a grave character that many consider the essence of cante jondo; in fact, much of the rest of the 12-beat family is historically explained as variations on soleá.
Alegrías. Shares exactly the same theoretical accents as soleá (3, 6, 8, 10, 12), but sounds completely different because of its tempo, much livelier, and its festive character, native to Cádiz. A distinctive feature of alegrías is the “silencio”: an instrumental guitar passage, with no cante, that marks a dramatic pause within the structure of the letra.
Bulerías. Also starts from accents on 3, 6, 8, 10 and 12, but it’s the palo that plays with them the most: shifting, anticipating, delaying them, and adding constant syncopation that makes it, by far, the hardest compás for beginners to follow. Its final remate on beat 12 is usually the most recognizable, sharpest hit in all of flamenco compás, which is why it’s often used as a reference point for “latching onto” the cycle.
Seguiriya. The most particular case in the whole amalgam family: although it’s also based on a 12-pulse cycle, it’s traditionally grouped and counted asymmetrically, in irregular blocks (usually described as 5+4+3), and many guitar and dance teachers prefer to explain it as a cycle that conceptually starts on beat 8 relative to soleá, rather than counting it linearly from one to twelve. The result is a compás that sounds more “broken,” unstable and cutting than soleá, which fits the tragic, anguished character usually associated with this palo.
Guajira. Musically related to soleá and petenera within the same 12-beat amalgam family, guajira spreads its accents more loosely and less sharply, giving it a light, “aflamencado” feel very different from the gravity of soleá. It’s one of the so-called ida y vuelta cantes, with a direct influence from Cuban music that arrived in Spain through 19th- and 20th-century emigration.

Same number of beats, very different sounds

It’s worth stressing something this table, by its very nature, can make look simpler than it is: two palos sharing “on paper” the same 12 beats and the same theoretical accents — as is the case with soleá, alegrías and, largely, bulería — doesn’t mean they sound alike. Tempo, character, silences, and how each performer plays with delaying or anticipating those accents are what ultimately define each palo. This sheet is a starting point for the ear, not a substitute for listening to a lot of flamenco, live or recorded.